ARTICLES

From Squalor to Sanctity

THE JOHN CORAPI STORY

By George Neumayr

John Corapi, a Sacramento County priest, knew that he would "make his mark on the world." But in the 1970s, it never occurred to him that his influence would come through consecrated life. At the time, he was snorting cocaine and cutting deals for rock and movie stars.

Born "poor" in upstate New York, young John Corapi started his search for success down the avenues of sports and the military. Both proved dead-ends: his aspiration to star in football ended with an injury and "then I was back to being nobody again"; his hopes to star as a Green Beret in Vietnam dissolved after he fell out of a "stupid helicopter," which tied him to an administrative desk in Germany for three years.

Corapi left the military to enter business, going to "Las Vegas of all places" as an accountant to the "big casinos" like the "Flamingo and Tropicana." He found the "neon" and "excitement" intoxicating and enjoyed "[being] a big man among my friends in a little kind of a way....There is something seductive about it....And I became more and more successful."

After a time Corapi traveled to Beverly Hills to capitalize on the "Gold Rush" in real estate. Within two years, he had his own real estate company. By the age of 35, he was a multimillionaire.

"I had rock stars as clients. I bought a new Ferrari-- a nice shiny red one and I had mine before Magnum PI had his. And I used to get in the Ferrari with the top down, with my cowboy hat and my shades. And I would ride down Rodeo Drive.

"I began to party with the stars. I began to run in the fast lane, fast money, fast cars, fast women, fast track to destruction.

"I remember one evening I was at a party in the Hollywood hills and a young movie star said to me, 'I want to introduce you to my best friend.' I thought to myself, 'Oh boy, now I'm going to meet a really good-looking girl.' And so she took me into another room and she opened her purse and took out a gold container and opened it up and there was a white powder in there. And she said, 'Meet my best friend, cocaine.' And that began a ride towards hell."

"I began to party more and work less." His cocaine habit had reached "ten thousand dollars a week."

Wasted and near penniless, he washed up at a Veterans Hospital in Southern California, experiencing "a kind of darkness you can only imagine if you have been there....I remember the low point....I was locked in an examination room in agony, thinking how could it have come to this. How could I be here?"

Released from the hospital, Corapi wandered the streets of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles. Too proud to visit a soup kitchen-- "Could you imagine a multimillionarie walking the streets?"-- he discovered that "he didn't know how to survive on the street." His mother, learning of his predicament from a friend, called him and said, "Son, why don't you come home?" She sent him a one-way plane ticket home.

Corapi returned to his shabby hometown depressed, recalling the life he had squandered: his house with its view of the "Channel Islands Harbor," his Ferrari and Cadillac, and his "boat docked to the house." Back home, he saw "run-down buildings, poverty and misery and I was sick right to my stomach."

For three years he wanted to die. "I would pray in tears and I would fall on my knees and say, 'Oh Lord help me. Save me." But nothing happened, until he resolved to give up sin. "When I was ready to lay down sin, God was ready to raise me up."

On June 23, 1984, his depression broke: "I knelt down. I cried out to God and I said, 'Lord if you are real-- and I'm not exactly sure if you are or not-- you better save me and do it fast...And something strange happened...A tremendous peace came over me, a peace that passes all understanding...It was a peace that permeated my entire being...I couldn't twitch a muscle...I cried tears of repentance."

Corapi then went to his mother Veronica, whom he likens to St. Monica because of her prayers on his behalf, and said, "Mom, I think I would like to go to confession."

Corapi chose to go out of town for his soul-purging. "I wasn't stupid...I was a big-time sinner." He ended up at the Shrine of the North American Martyrs in upstate New York. "Scared to death" and worried that the old confessor might "throw him out," he made his confession, and at the moment it concluded, the clock showed three o'clock in the afternoon. Which prompted his confessor to say: "Amazing. It is precisely three p.m., the hour of mercy, the hour Our Blessed Lord died on the cross for you, the hour that his blood was shed so that you might be washed clean of your sins."

It occurred to Corapi at that moment that he might become a priest. He disclosed this desire to the confessor. "Can you imagine this poor man? He had just heard my confession. And I'm announcing to him that I am called to be a priest? He kind of staggered in his rocking chair and he said, 'All things are possible with God.'"

Corrapi "went off a new man" and within "another couple of years I was in a monastery, and another couple of years I was in the seminary. Within three more years I was in Europe doing my doctoral studies in theology at the University of Navarre."

In 1991, he became a priest, joining the order of the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity. "It was during that time I had a singular grace and found myself on a bus to Rome and on May 25, 1991, preparing for the next day I would be ordained a priest before Pope John Paul II.

"And that day came, and I processed into St. Peter's Basilica with 60 other men. We arrived at the front and went to our places, and as I went to take my seat, I turned and 10 feet from me was Mother Teresa of Calcutta behind me and to the front of me was Pope John Paul II...So you can see God can take you from a very bad place and put you in a very good place."

Today Corapi is "one of the most powerful preachers in America," says Father Joseph Fessio. Ironically, however, Corapi is a suspect figure in certain quarters. Corapi tells Catholics that "the devil is real. That is a doctrine of the faith. It is a heresy to claim there is no devil and claim to be Catholic."

A year or so ago, some priests in the diocese of Sacramento applied pressure on Sacramento Bishop William Weigand to remove Corapi from his position as director of faith formation for the diocese. His forthright catechesis and willingness to admit problems in the Church publicly (in a 1996 interview with the Sacramento Bee, he noted that "more than a few" priests wouldn't allow him to address their congregations and said that there "are people today-- even priests-- who do not teach what the Church teaches") had delighted orthodox rank-and-file Catholics. But some priests took offense (Father James Murphy, director of communications for the Sacramento diocese, admitted to the Faith that "tension" existed between Corapi and certain Sacramento priests, but refused to define the source of the tension).

For Corapi, whose national audience continues to grow, such troubles must seem trivial compared to the darkness of his past. "No matter how scarlet your sins, God in his infinite mercy can bring you to a place beyond your wildest dreams," he says.

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